There are many flowers that are considered auspicious that welcome in the Lunar New Year, ranging from orchids to chrysanthemums to lilies and peach blossoms, but the one that I grew up with and know intimately because my grandma had a bush of them is the understated yet gorgeous plum blossom. Plum blossoms, or mei hua 梅花 in Chinese, are these huge, thin branches of small, dainty white or pale pink blooms. They initially appear unassuming, but once their little tiny buds bloom, they are like welcome sprays of warmth and happiness along seemingly bare and austere brown stems. If you are lucky enough to display them in your home, not only will they last quite some time (assuming you cut or buy them when the buds are tightly closed), but you’ll definitely need a large and sturdy vase to store them in, as the branches are quite long and big.

I grew up in a flat in the Richmond District of San Francisco, where we had a backyard that was once filled with gorgeous flowers and a handful of Chinese vegetables my grandma grew; this assortment included the gorgeous mei hua/plum blossoms, which grew in the top right corner of the yard. Although the Richmond is known for being in the colder and foggier part of the city, somehow, my grandma always made her garden bloom. But once she died, many things died with her, from the garden to all her amazing recipes and cooking. My dad attempted (and failed mostly) at growing a number of things, always blaming the weather as opposed to his own efforts/choices in flowers. I always wondered: if it was really so hard, then why did Grandma always succeed?

After my grandma died, my dad decided he didn’t want the plum blossom tree anymore. So he hacked it. I didn’t realize exactly how sad it was until years later, when I had vague memories of those plum blossoms and realized that they were never going to be anymore because my dad stupidly decided to kill it for zero reason. It’s not like he replaced it with some other beautiful tree or shrub. The yard continues to look like a haphazard waste land of weeds and random crap growing with no rhyme or reason. And recently while in Flushing, I asked a flower vendor how much a couple of branches of these plum blossoms would be. I was shocked: she told me she was charging $60 for a couple stems! If only my dad had realized how valuable these were, then maybe he wouldn’t have killed the bush.

Maybe at some point, I will buy some plum blossoms to display around Lunar New Year, in memory of my grandma. Whenever I see them, I am reminded of her and her green thumb. And I do quite love them even though I never have them. Plum blossoms are a sign of the beginning of spring, so it makes sense that they would be a part of Lunar New Year, or what in China is called the Spring Festival.

When I first started coming to Australia with Chris, I found it both loving and odd that his mom did all the laundry for everyone in the house. In the home where I grew up, we all did our separate laundry: dad had his hamper, Ed had his own, our mom and I shared one, and when my grandma was around, she had her own laundry. Chris and his brother insisted my family was weird that we separated it. But when I started asking other families what they did, it seemed pretty split 50/50 from an anecdotal standpoint: many families did what my family did and split up laundry, while other families shared and one person owned it. For the latter, it seems like a burden on the person who does the laundry for everyone; in almost all those cases, it’s the mother/wife of the house who does it, and it seemed a bit unfair and sexist to me.

So whenever we are in Australia, we always have the perk of having Chris’s mom do all our laundry. While it’s nice to have someone else do my laundry (Chris’s mom) while I’m at his parents’ place, sometimes, it still feels a bit weird knowing someone else is handling things like my underwear and bras. But she seems to enjoy doing the laundry and finds it relaxing. I always thank her profusely for her laundry services. I get the feeling that she’s not used to being thanked by her husband, who clearly has all his laundry done by her. Things like laundry and household chores are always thankless jobs, so I hope she knows I appreciate her doing this for me while I am there.

While many people, like Chris, look forward to the Christmas season as a time to escape everyday reality and catch up and enjoy time with family and close friends, not everyone sees the festive season this way. For many, Christmas is a reminder of the pain and anguish that family members have shared in the past. For some, it’s a reminder of who is no longer with us, whether it’s due to severed ties, death, or distance. For others, it’s a reckoning of what one’s family could potentially be, but will never be.

In the beginning of our relationship when we’d come down to Melbourne every year for Christmas, I think I was a bit shocked at how close and how much detailed information and conversation Chris would have with his relatives. None of my conversations or interactions with my own family were like this. Though I did partake in all those conversations, I felt a bit envious that I couldn’t have the same with my own blood relatives. But he reminded me that I was part of his family now, and thus they were my family. I think we all know that it’s never quite the same, even if we do enjoy the time together. But as the years went by, I realized that I had idealized his family, and they actually weren’t as perfect and functional as I’d originally made up in my head. I suppose in my own mind, they actually did seem perfect relative to my own family. But with each passing year, I’d notice little passive aggressions, strange exchanges and comments, factoids shared of previous events, and secrets shared by family members to me in confidence. And I realized that they were just as dysfunctional as any other family, but that at Christmas time, everyone let things go to have a semblance of family, togetherness, and love. And that was totally fine and was good for everyone. Their level of dysfunction was never as toxic or unhealthy as my own family’s, and so it still all worked. Relatively speaking, I’d take his family, immediate and extended, over my own blood family any day, always.

I’ve referenced this line on my blog before, as it’s a quote that comes to my mind every holiday season: “All happy families are alike: each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s the first sentence in the famous Leo Tolstoy novel Anna Karenina. But each time I think about this line, its meaning changes a little bit. I used to think about this when my uncle would try to tell me to forgive my dad for what he had done to Ed and me growing up, as “He didn’t know any better because that was how he himself was raised.” I thought about this when Ed had died, and my parents screamed at me and told me I had no right to tell my aunts, uncle, and cousins he had died. I’ve thought about this when hearing about the double standards that people in Chris’s family have for some people versus others, and the blind eyes turned to this. I have also thought about this when learning of the dysfunctions of Chris’s family and extended family, about those who choose not to be in contact, of those who make excuses not to see each other, and about how many in the family like to sweep issues under the rug instead of openly discussing them as problems. Every family has problems and challenges, some larger and more critical than others.

But at the end of the day, we cannot change other people, especially when it’s already so challenging to change ourselves. We just have to set our boundaries, try our best to put a stop to our own unhealthy patterns, and be our authentic selves as much as possible. No family unit is perfect. How we choose to accept that family unit is probably the outstanding question that will last our entire lifetime. I feel that struggle pretty much every day, and every time I have any interaction with my parents. In the back of my mind, I am fully aware that time with them on this earth is limited; they are, after all, at the latter end of their lives, and we have no idea how much time they have. I feel a little guilt when it comes to how I’ve lessened contact with them. I call my mom now at most once every two weeks; it’s a far cry from calling her every day once upon a time about 10 years ago. I realize it probably angers both of them that I chose not to come home (and let them see Kaia) this past year. But that’s what growing up is about: setting boundaries, even if it means when after their lives end that I may always wonder if setting those boundaries really was the best thing for all of us.